Category: Government

Again, the talk of not healthcare reform but rather healthcare payment reform and the interests of lawmakers, physicians, patients, payers and industry at stake with potential significant cost/reimbursement and research budget cuts proposed has led me to thinking, without politicizing, how bizarre it all really can be. My first year of medical school a friend and I […]

By Simon Häger, Product manager Sectra Digital Pathology Many pathology labs are currently switching from glass-based reviews using a microscope, to a computer-based workflow for reviewing digital images. This transition is particularly strong in the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. It is highly likely that most labs throughout these regions will be completely digital within […]

Congressman Tom Price, MD (R-GA) was confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) by the Senate on February 10, 2017. He was approved by a party-line vote of 52-47. Dr. Price will be the first physician to lead HHS since Dr. Louis W. Sullivan during the George H.W. Bush administration. Dr. Price, […]

Politico (2/5, Palmieri) reports that in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly which aired before the Super Bowl, President Trump “walked back his recent vow that Obamacare would be replaced in short order,” saying that “the process is ‘complicated’ and ‘maybe it’ll take till sometime into next year.’” Trump said, “It statutorily takes a […]

Save your spot to learn more about the effects of reimbursement changes in the US on the anatomic pathology market and in your laboratory You are invited to our next complimentary webinar – January 24, 2017 Understanding Reimbursement Changes in the U.S. and What They Mean to Your Anatomic Pathology (AP) Laboratory The United States […]

It has been said there are only two certainties in life – death and taxes. Actually, there are a few more. The annual ASCO meeting always takes place during the first week of June, the annual RSNA meeting happens the week after Thanksgiving. The annual ASH meeting and the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) […]

medpagetoday.com posted a brief but concise article earlier this week on the issue of FDA regulating laboratory developed tests (LDTs). While the FDA has had the ability to regulate these tests since 1976, largely once regarded as “simple and scarce” as the article mentions, not before a draft guidance issued in 2014 has the FDA […]

Great news from Philips who announced on October 21st their completion of a glass versus digital concordance study to be submitted to FDA. The press release mentions 2,000 cases with approximately 16,000 reads. The press release goes on to say that the final discordance rate was 1%. Philips will submit the results of the study along […]

The AP (10/3, Tanner) reports breast cancer patients are getting involved in a “big new project that aims to gather enormous troves of information about their diseases in hopes of finding new and better ways of treating patients like them – women whose cancer has spread, or metastasized, and left them nearly out of options.” […]

I haven’t written much about the President’s Cancer Moonshot initiative recently and as much as I would like – perhaps because following some Blue Ribbon Panel recommendations and a large number of organizations and individuals expressing, in general, positive feedback among the cancer community, there hasn’t been a lot of news about next steps. I […]

Last Fall I wrote a couple of posts about the growing disenchantment with ‘Pinkification’ and ‘Pinktober’ referencing the all-out blitz during October to go “Pink” for breast bancer awareness and prevention. In one of the pieces I mentioned by disenchantment with what happened a number of years ago I saw in clinical practice and last […]

There is an interesting article in this month’s AMA Journal of Ethics by Drs. Crane and Gardner on the use of pathology images in social media. The authors introduce the article in their abstract as “There is a rising interest in the use of social media by pathologists. However, the use of pathology images on […]